A three-person team built Clara Global — a full expense management platform for any country and currency — in weeks, not years. Clara's AI Monitor Report explains why this is no longer an outlier: across 10,000+ Latin American companies, the gap between AI builders and everyone else is growing fast.
The Latin American leader in business spend management announced the launch of a product available for the global expansion of its customers.The company's own spending data from 10,000+ companies across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia shows why speed and AI adoption is becoming a competitive divide.
WebSummit, Rio de Janeiro, June 2026 — Clara today launched Clara Global, its first customer-facing product whose code was built entirely with AI. Announced at WebSummit in Rio de Janeiro, the platform is an independently-available expense management solution that allows companies to manage employee expenses in any country and any currency, addressing a demand from Clara's own clients whose operations extend beyond Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the company’s core markets. While users of Clara Global are able to process payments made with other cards, Clara will also launch its own stablecoin-backed cards that work in any currency.
“As the champion for Latin American businesses, we increasingly hear from our customers about their ambitions to expand beyond their borders. With this launch, we make a big step in supporting the region’s organizations with global ambitions,” said Gerry Giacoman Colyer, Clara’s CEO.
Development speed and working with AI
What stands out about this launch is not just the product: it’s also how fast it was built. A three-person team – inclusive of a security-focused engineer – built and shipped Clara Global in weeks using AI tools including Claude Code as the primary development environment. The team, known internally as the Lighthouse Squad, built Clara Global while documenting new ways of working, designed to be replicated across Clara, so that every team in the company can build at the same pace.
“This launch is a public example of the new velocity at which Clara is moving. In a pre-AI era, it would have taken the same team about two years of work to complete Clara Global - now, it was weeks, most of which were spent in enabling infrastructure and security requirements that meet our high standards. Combining velocity in developing new features with Clara’s core payments, regulatory, and capital capabilities is what makes us incredibly excited for this new phase of growth,” added Juan Zuluaga, the company’s Product Director.
Self-improving software
Clara also described this as an example of what they’re calling “self-improving software”. Users are able to provide product feedback through an integrated widget. The feedback is then aggregated, summarized, and converted into feature tickets which can be completed by the AI autonomously or by a 'human in the loop'. "With this foundation, users can expect requested features to be delivered even on the same day”, adds Zuluaga.
The launch of Clara Global is not an isolated case. Clara's AI Monitor Report—drawing on monthly transaction data from June 2025 through May 2026—tracks two structurally different groups of companies. This data encompasses over 10,000 businesses utilizing Clara's corporate cards to purchase AI products across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
Usage falls into two distinct categories:
This spending pattern is largely reflected by the platform of choice. In Brazil, the average monthly spend per company on Anthropic grew more than 8x over the past 12 months, leaping from US$132 to US$1,114. In the same period, OpenAI saw roughly 40% growth, moving from US$209 to US$293. Anthropic’s figures are surging because the depth of usage per customer is growing exponentially, whereas OpenAI exhibits behavior more typical of a standard subscription model.
The dynamic between OpenAI and Anthropic increasingly resembles a neck-and-neck race, where one’s sprint is immediately met by the other’s reaction. When Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7 on April 16, corporate card transactions in Brazil linked to the company spiked by 55% in a single month. In response, OpenAI launched GPT-5.5 and, after losing market share in April, began seeing a modest recovery in May. For our next update, we are keenly watching to see whether this marks a sustained reversal or a one-time blip.
Over the past 12 months, OpenAI's share of corporate AI spending in Brazil fell from 72% to 24%, while Anthropic experienced a meteoric rise—surging from less than 3% to 53% of all corporate AI spend. While both companies grew in total volume, Anthropic grew substantially faster and captured significant market share.
Notably, OpenAI still reaches a higher sheer number of companies across the three markets. This difference in share reflects a structural gap in how each tool is utilized: OpenAI functions primarily as a subscription product, while Anthropic acts as infrastructure that scales alongside the products built on top of it.
Of the three monitored countries, Brazil accounts for roughly half of the total corporate AI spending. However, the trajectory remains the same across all three markets: adoption is widening, and companies that have already adopted AI are spending more.
Country
Total AI Spend Growth
Avg. Monthly Spend per Company
Key Market Context
Brazil
423%
US$1,180
Accounts for ~50% of total regional corporate AI spend
Colombia
734%
US$670
Fastest growth rate, though total volume remains below Brazil
Mexico
321%
US$400
Adoption continues to widen steadily
Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia share common spending patterns, primarily the preeminence of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor as the three largest AI vendors. In Brazil, Cursor held its position as the third-largest AI spend category throughout the quarter, with Replit close behind (growing 22% from March to May).
The rise of these tools reflects a broader evolution: what was termed "vibe coding" just a year ago has rapidly evolved into the practice of using AI to prototype, build, and iterate on software at speed. Ultimately, Clara Global serves as a real-world benchmark for how fast Latin American companies can create and deploy solutions.
About Clara
Clara is the leading corporate spend management solution in Latin America. Its platform, designed to automate financial operations and deliver an unparalleled level of control and efficiency, includes corporate credit cards, invoice management, bill payments, cross-border payments, and proprietary real-time expense management software.
Launched in 2021, Clara has since raised investments from leading regional venture capital firms such as Monashees, Kaszek Ventures, and Canary, as well as global investors including Notable Capital, Coatue, DST Global, ICONIQ, and General Catalyst.
Clara's mission is to empower companies to operate with agility and clarity, helping them become more efficient and less bureaucratic through a platform that integrates multiple payment methods with its innovative spend management tools.
For more information about Clara’s products and solutions, visit clara.com
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